Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 May 19

= May 19 =

Falomlás
The comic anthology "Breakthrough" (in German "Durchbruch", in French "Après le mur"), published in 1990 edited by Andreas C. Knigge and Pierre Christin, was called "Falomlás" in Hungarian. I have not been able to figure out what this Hungarian title means. Could anyone with knowledge in Hungarian explain? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.229.20.147 (talk) 15:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I put it into Google translate and then tried every conceivable word break. If the title is actually "Fal omlás", that would be "Wall collapse". --Khajidha (talk) 15:29, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikitionary has an entry for wikt:fal 'wall'. It doesn't have one for "omlás", but it does have wikt:kőomlás 'rockslide', explained as "kő (“rock”) +‎ omlás (“fall”), so yes, that would point to fal + omlás = wall collapse. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:32, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The term for "fall of the Berlin wall" is "a berlini fal leomlása". The verbal prefix le- denotes downward action and -a is a possessive suffix. As a compound noun, like German Mauerfall, it should grammatically be falomlása. --Lambiam 20:34, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure about that. (Do you speak Hungarian?) This article seems to imply regular noun+noun compounds in Hungarian are formed without such a possessive affix. Maybe the possessive affix in those two examples ("a berlini fal leomlasa" and "a tragikus oktobér falomlasa" is just triggered by the larger nominal syntagm the word is part of ("the downfall of the Berlin wall" and "the wall collapse of October")? Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:54, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, if the suffix is retained, then standard Hungarian orthography requires the compound to be written as two separate words: fal omlása. But when the suffix is omitted, the compound should be written without spaces: falomlás (see Hungarian orthography § Subordination). As a simple GBS shows, this rule is quite often not followed in practice. --Lambiam 10:30, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Shaw is famous for his advocacy for revised English spelling, but I had no idea he was an expert on Hungarian orthography too. :) --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:16, 21 May 2020 (UTC)